Voicemails
by elleigator
Summary: Chloe listens to her mother's voicemail from Evan's bathroom floor. One shot. TW for themes of abuse and minor references to self harm.


_"Hey, Chloe. It's me again."_

Her mother's voice echoed from her phone, which lay about a foot out of reach, on the side of the sink. Chloe lay, unmoving, on the floor of Evan's bathroom. It was cold and the smell was unfamiliar, but she couldn't get up. There was the scent of bleach, but not the nice lemon bleach her Mum used to put on her grass-stained school socks. The kind of bleach that was labelled something stupid like 'fresh towels' or 'pine leaves' and in fact only smelled of paint. She could smell blood, too, her own blood. Tricking from her nose and out of her mouth, onto the white tiled floor. The whole room was white- not like her and and Cameron and Nicky's bathroom at home, with Nicky's colourful inscense that she burned in the bathroom 'for cleansing of the soul!' and Cameron's many, many, cans and bottles of hair products. Not like her Mum's bathroom either, with all the silly clay ducks painted various offending shades of the rainbow, collected from the little arcade shops on their caravan holidays in Tenby. It was white and clinical, one bottle of shampoo and one bottle of conditioner, and a can of shaving foam.

_"I know you're probably sick of me calling now. I just worry, you know me. Can't stop. It's just, Chloe, no matter what you say or do, you're my baby. You're my baby girl, and I love you more than I will ever be able to tell you."_

A tear trickled from Chloe's eyes, falling from her cheek and mixing with the small pool of blood on the floor. Her head was heavy, so heavy, too heavy to lift, so she remained collapsed. The left side of her face tingled, as if a bruise was forming, and her lip was so swollen she couldn't open her mouth. She couldn't fully remember what happened last night, but she was sure he had been drinking again. It wasn't his fault, not really. She _made _him angry, and when he had had a few he could get upset. She did things to set him off- spoke out of line, challenged him, tried to text her mother. He said Ange was bad for her, bad for her mental health, and she trusted him. She always trusted him. But where was he now? Maybe he had left for work already. What was the time? Was she supposed to work today? She couldn't work like this, she couldn't let anyone see her like this. Her chest was bruised too, from where he had kicked her on the floor, and her right thigh was slick with what must be blood.

_"When I saw you get in the car with Evan the other night, I was going to run after you, but I didn't. I told you- and myself- that I would keep out of your relationships. But Chloe, I can tell. I'm your Mum. I can tell something's not right about him. I'm not doing it to spite you, and I'm sorry if you think so."_

Chloe sniffed in a bit, which was a mistake. Blood filled her mouth again and she coughed feebly, trying to sit up but finding that her arms buckeled underneath her. Persevering, she used the side of the bathtub to pull herself up, hands still shaking. She reached for her phone but missed, merely tipping it into the bowl of the sink, hearing it clatter to the bottom.

_"And then you came in the next day and I could tell you weren't right. You wouldn't talk to me, and I'm not going to lie and say it didn't hurt, it did, but I was scared. The way you were talking, you sounded just like you did back when you were a teenager," _Ange took a deep breath_. "All I wanted to do was hug you and take you home with me, but I couldn't."_

She had been right. She had always been right, annoyingly, on almost everything. Right about the purple hair dye looking chavvy aged fourteen, right about the belly button piercing getting infected aged seventeen, and right about Evan. Chloe's mind drifted back to conversations with her Mum, about Evan being bad news, being manipulative, being self centered. But she had told herself not to listen, that her Mum was just being selfish, trying to keep her all to herself, but how wrong she was.

_"And Dominic, oh God, Dominic. Where do I start? I think he means well, really. I know he does. I think he's just as confused as we are, and he's going about this whole thing in the completely wrong way. I don't know what to do."_

Chloe knew, deep down, that this wasn't Dominic's fault. It just felt like it was, because everything had been fine before he came along. She would have stood up to Evan and got out of there before things had started to eslcalate, she would have told him where to go. She would have stayed home with Nicky and Cam last night, made pizzas on pitta breads, and probably burnt them because _God that oven is shit. _She would have texted her Mum before she went to bed, stopping her worrying, because it's not really her Mum's fault. She did the best she could for everyone in the situation at the time. And Dominic was a baby, it want his fault either. And it definitely, definitely, wasn't her's.

_"But yeah. I'll stop calling now, you don't want to speak to me and that's okay. I'll wait until you're ready. I just want you to know that I love you so much, no matter what, and I will do anything for you. Anything. Let me know you're okay when you get a chance. I love you."_

Finally, Chloe managed to hold her phone still and unlock it, scrabbling to find the 'call back' option, pressing it with trembling fingers. Ange picked up straight away, much to Chloe's luck.

"Mum?" She croaked out, desperately.


End file.
